“What for? I haven’t done anything. If you’ll let me explain——”
But again the man with the gun shut him off, as he came down to the hall, making Potter precede him into the dining room.
“Go through this room into that other room at the back. I use it for a library.”
Potter obeyed. He knew the room well enough. It had been used for card playing when the house was occupied by its former tenants. It overlooked the back garden, and had always been a favorite lounge of his when he had had time to loaf a little.
With his hands up in the air, and looking very much like a cornered desperado in the moving pictures, Potter took his stand against the opposite wall, as his captor commanded, and waited for what might come.
The man took up a telephone from the heavy table in the middle of the room, at the same time switching on a bunch of electric lights depending from the ceiling, and which illuminated the room brilliantly. As he did so, he looked into Potter’s face and started violently.
“Good heavens! Howard Milmarsh!” he blurted out, putting the telephone down, but keeping the revolver in a firm grip. “What does this mean? Why have you come here? You know me, don’t you? I was head waiter at the Old Pike Inn, and I was there the night you—you——”
“What are you handing me?” demanded T. Burton Potter, his surprise getting the better of his fear. “I don’t know anybody named Howard Milmarsh. My name is Potter, and I used to live here.”
“Live here? Why did you live here? Why did you hide yourself when you could have a fortune by asking for it—by just showing yourself?”